Investigators confer Sunday near the state police major crime unit truck at the search scene for Kimberly Moreau near Route 108 in Canton. A back hoe was among the equipment used to dig for evidence in case. Carl D. Walsh/Staff Photographer

The search for a teenager from Jay who disappeared in 1986 will likely resume within a month in Canton, where police dogs indicated in recent days that human remains are on land next to the property owned by a man who was one of the last people seen with her.

Maine State Police Detective Sgt. Mark Holmquist said it was a sign of progress in the search for Kimberly Moreau, which began Thursday on 5 acres owned by Brian Enman and included two neighboring properties. Dogs focused on a 5-acre plot to the west, and that’s where Holmquist said a future search would focus.

Moreau disappeared on May 10, 1986, after arguing with her boyfriend and canceling plans to attend the Jay High School junior prom with him. Instead, Moreau, then 17, went out with a female friend and met two 25-year-old acquaintances. Police have said one was Enman, but they haven’t called him a suspect or said what led them to his property, which was cleared Sunday after police found no remains.

Moreau’s father, Richard, has said Enman “knows where my daughter is,” but Enman has denied involvement in her disappearance, saying he “rode around,” drank alcohol and did cocaine with the three that day, but dropped off Moreau, alone, in downtown Jay after she told him she didn’t want to go home.

Holmquist said that the next search will likely begin within a month, and that investigators have landowners’ permission to search there. In the search so far, state police and other agencies have used dogs and ground-penetrating radar from the University of Maine.

Holmquist said only the dogs have focused on the 5-acre plot next to Enman’s property, which they plan to search more, and radar searches there have produced no results so far.

“The best way to describe this is putting a 10,000-piece puzzle together,” Richard Moreau told The Associated Press on Monday. “We’ve got to have the final piece to tell us where the body is.”

The search of the property appeared to be a big break.

State police obtained a search warrant, and Moreau said he was told that there was new evidence in the disappearance.

The land was owned by someone else in 1986, but Enman later purchased it. He filed a building permit in 2004, and there’s a home on the property. Holmquist declined to say what made investigators zero in on the land.

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EddyL

Hopefully after they bulldoze and gouge somebody’s land for nothing, they’re going to restore it to its original condition.

bootjack

Do you know where she is? You sound awfully confident that she’s not in their search area.

placertogo

This case has dragged on for far too many years. I thought back in 1986 that the girl ended up getting picked up by someone else before getting home. Enman was a likely suspect but others knew he had been with Ms. Moreau and he had to know he would be a
person of interest if she met with harm. It seemed somewhat credible
that the girl did not want her family to see her dropped off from a
vehicle as they would hear the sound of the vehicle in front of the
house or the yard, meet her coming in the door and question where she
had been. Who would offer to pick up a young girl walking along the
road in the wee hours of the morning and not raise alarm or suspicion? A
police officer perhaps? There are a number of agencies which patrolled
in that area where Franklin and Androscoggin Counties converge: Jay
PD, Livermore Falls, PD, Franklin SO, Androscoggin SO, and State Police.
The case was botched from the time she was first reported missing
until the time when it was realized foul play was most certainly
involved. Why?

StevenMajor

Why all this recent effort, press, and millions of dollars towards cold case resolution?
Robert Burton is a killer and has been loose in the Maine woods terrorizing thousands of people for over 2 months. Are the police waiting for him to strike again to get a lead? Why has law enforcement failed to apprehend Mr. Burton?
Priorities matter.